As with my previous 2 posts, I'll be using the UK as an example of what needs to be done.
Here, transport makes up about a third of our nation's emissions but we've made practically no impact on cutting them over the last 3 decades (They are about 3% down on 1990 levels). One problem is that, despite vehicles becoming increasingly fuel efficient, this has been balanced out by increased mileage per passenger.
Electric vehicle (aka EV) sales have been increasing but they still only make up around 3% of new car sales. Why is that?
Well, EVs are still more expensive to buy than their petrol equivalents (ICEs). The government gives grants for anyone buying an EV - which has made them more affordable - but is already cutting the grants (which is blamed for a recent fall in sales in this country). There is also a perceived shortage of charge points, and various concerns about the time taken to charge, and how far they can actually go on a full battery.
Contrast this with Norway, where almost 60% of new car sales in 2019 are EVs. Why? Because the Norwegian government is making a real push for EVs: No road tax; no sales tax; no charge on public ferries; no toll charges; free municipal parking; an extensive charging point system; and EVs able to use bus lanes.
Since around 50% of all UK transport emissions are from cars, then our government needs to make similar moves. And, as nearly all the major car manufactures are throwing their weight behind EVs because they see that's where the market is heading, prices will soon fall in line with ICEs as demand increases. This will eventually allow the government to ease off the subsidies for EVs.
The problem then becomes, how do you get all the old ICEs of the road? It's alright for us middle-class types, and those with company cars, but there are an awful lot of people out there that simply can't afford to buy new cars. That's why we need to get the EV revolution going as soon as possible, so EVs start coming onto the second-hand market in large numbers, sooner.
We also need to improve 'public' transport. Back in the 80s and 90s the government sold off our rail and bus networks to private companies with the promise that this would make them more efficient and, thanks to competition, cheaper. Neither happened. If we want to get more people out of their cars, and thereby reduce emissions in the transition to all EV, we need to make buses and trains cheaper, faster, less crowded, and more reliable.
Whilst electric cars and buses are already a reality and just need some encouragement from the government, lorries are more of a problem. Low carbon HGVs are still to arrive. Tesla is working on one with a 500 mile range, and there's talk of hydrogen fuel cells being a potential solution but, frankly, mass production of low carbon HGVs still looks maybe 3 or 4 years away at the earliest. Net Zero by 2050 is still doable though.
Trains: The government wants all diesel trains removed from our system by 2040. Currently, more than half of all trains are diesel in this country. The delay is because electrifying the rail system is expensive and will cost tens of billions of pounds to do. Thankfully they only produce less than 1% of the nation's carbon emissions.
So, de-carbonising road and rail transport is basically about government incentivising people/companies to buy EVs until they reach similar prices to petrol vehicles; and throwing money at electrifying the rail infrastructure.
Doing all this has two added benefits: 1) Currently, there are around 40,000 premature deaths per year in the UK due to air pollution. This is almost entirely due to vehicle emissions. So net-zero transport could save thousands of lives a year; 2) As we all know, wind and solar energy are intermittent sources, sometimes there is too little, sometimes there's too much. It's been suggested that when we have huge numbers of EVs plugged into the national grid, we might be able to use their batteries to store energy when there's too much available (say in the middle of the night) and feed it back into the grid when demand is higher i.e. Smooth out the peaks and troughs in supply.
Next: Aviation and Shipping
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